Wednesday, January 24, 2018

YouTube is further ramping up the Official Artist Channels scheme it launched last year, which aims to bring all content relating to any one artist on the YouTube platform into one easily navigable place.

Artists might have multiple channels on YouTube – for example one managed by Vevo for official videos and another managed by label or management for promotional content – and they may also appear on third party channels too. The Official Artist Channels set up aims to make it easier for users to find all the content around any one act.

The innovation this week is that fans will now be able to subscribe to these aggregated channels, the aim being that a fan can get updates on all content relating to an artist via one subscription. “Uniting subscribers under one channel means you’ll be able to go deeper and explore all of the content from the artists you love”, says YouTube in a blog post on the new development.

“For fans looking for music from the artists they love, finding the Official Artist Channel for an artist will soon be as simple as searching for their name on YouTube”, it goes on. “You can also identify the Official Artist Channel by looking for the artist icon (the musical note) in YouTube search and on the channel page”.

Quite what the expansion of the Official Artist Channels scheme means for YouTube’s relationship with Vevo isn’t clear. The Sony/Universal-owned music video firm manages the ‘official’ YouTube channels of many artists on behalf of their labels. But the official Vevo artist channels now form part of the official YouTube channels. And that’s official.